Ragged Robin. _Lychnis flos cuculi._
Dedicated to _St. Felix_.
~May 22.~
_St. Yvo_, A. D. 1303. _St. Basiliscus_, Bp. A. D. 312. _Sts. Castus_
and _Æmilius_, A. D. 250. _St. Bobo_, A. D. 985. _St. Conall_, Abbot.
When first the soul of Love is sent abroad,
Warm through the vital air, and on the heart
Harmonious seizes, the gay troops begin,
In gallant thought, to plume the painted wing,
And try again the long-forgotten strain,
At first faint warbled. But no sooner grows
The soft infusion prevalent and wide,
Than all alive at once their joy o’erflows
In music unconfined. Up springs the Lark,
Shrill voiced and loud, the messenger of morn;
Ere yet the shadows fly, he mounted sings
Amid the dawning clouds, and from their haunt
Calls up the tuneful nations. Every copse
Deep tangled, tree irregular, and bush
Bending with dewy moisture o’er the heads
Of the coy quoristers that lodge within,
Are prodigal of harmony. The Thrush
And Woodlark, o’er the kind contending throng
Superior heard, run through the sweetest length
Of notes, when listening Philomela deigns
To let them joy, and purposes, in thought
Elate, to make her night excel their day.
The Blackbird whistles from the thorny brake,
The mellow Bullfinch answers from the grove.
Nor are the Linnets, o’er the flowering furze
Pour’d out profusely, silent. Joined to these
Innumerous songsters, in the freshening shade
Of newsprung leaves, their modulations mix,
Mellifluous. The Jay, the Rook, the Daw,
And each harsh pipe, discordant heard alone,
Aid the full concert, while the Stockdove breathes
A melancholy murmur through the whole.
Around our heads the whitewinged Plover wheels
Her sounding flight, and then directly on,
In long excursion, skims the level lawns,
To tempt him from her nest. The Wild Duck hence:
O’er the rough moss and o’er the trackless waste
The Heath Hen flutters, pious fraud, to lead
The hot pursuing Spaniel far astray!
_Thomson._
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